According to You
by Aqhagrl2806
Summary: She’d thought she’d known what she wanted when she started chasing after him. What she had been doing when they’d had sex and how everything would be when they had gotten together. But she’d been wrong, oh so wrong. Matt/Julie and Tim/Julie


**Hey guys! Okay, this is going to my first (but hopefully not last) FNL fanfic. I've written fanfiction before - although not in a while as my life has become a lot more hectic - just not for this category. But thanks to my boyfriend I've gotten hooked on this show and I just couldn't help wanting to write for it!**

**I'm starting easy, a one-shot. To make matters even worse, its a oneshot songfic haha. But I just couldn't resist. The first time I heard this song Julie and Tim Riggins popped into my head and, needing another guy to fill in the blank, my brain helpfully supplied Matt as the third character. Not to say that I think this is an accurate depiction of Matt, as I know that it isn't and I personally love Matt. I just happen to love Tim a whole hell of a lot more :D (seriously, have you seen him?!). This is just a story line that appeared in my head loosely the first time this song came on my radio and slowly started to take shape with each time I listened to it after that. And then, eventually, we got to this :) I wouldn't say it's my best work, but I'm tired of tinkering with it and changing all these minor details and I really just need to get it out there and start hearing what other people think of my work again, hopefully this will motivate me to really get on this full story that's been brewing in my mind for a while.**

**So, this is a Matt/Julie and Tim/Julie fic, read for yourself to see who wins her heart in the end ;) The song is According to You by Orianthi and if you havn't heard it I highly suggest listening to it before/during reading. And yes the lyrics are in the story to help the storyline flow and to explain it somewhat, but in all actuality the lyrics and listening to the song are not required. The lyrics are just there to help explain my motivation and I want you to listen to the song because...well because it's a damn good song! Lol.**

**Well, without further ado, I give you According to You (and pray that you like it, ;) )**

* * *

_According to you  
I'm stupid, I'm useless,  
I can't do anything right  
According to you  
I'm difficult, hard to please,  
forever changing my mind  
I'm a mess in a __dress__,  
can't show up on time,  
even if it would save my life  
According to you … According to you_

Julie thought she knew what she was doing when she got back together with Matt. Although she certainly hadn't planned on hooking up with him beside that fire, of losing her virginity practically in the woods, or of fixing everything with sex. She had never been that girl. But she had done it, and her and Matt had gotten back together, which she thought was what she wanted. And maybe in a way it was. She did want Matt back. But she wanted her Matt, not the new, popular one.

Not the Matt that got upset with her everytime she was five minutes late. Which, admittedly, might have happened pretty often. But she had always been like that, getting lost within her own world and drifting off. And really, what was the big deal about five minutes? Matt had used to tease her about it, purposely telling her to be somewhere ten mintues earlier than she actually needed to be to trick her into showing up on time and then laughing about it. Of course, that wasn't the only thing he'd found cute and charming that he no longer seemed to care for.

She was known long and far for her indecisiveness, how she constantly changed her mind. Her decisions would flip flop constantly until she was eventually forced into one final decision and, more often than not, the final decision seemed to be more about what was easier to do in that particular moment then any actual thinking or decision making process. Or how her indecision and tendency to lose track of time (and her homework…and her keys…and her cell phone…) left her running off to wherever she was supposed to be in whatever she happened to throw on and finger combing her hair. She rarely bothered with make up and never all that much of it. She wasn't the most put together girl, but once upon a time Matt had said he liked that about her.

This time around, though, he wasn't singing the same tune. He looked her over whenever she showed up and no longer in the 'you're so beautiful baby' way, but in the critical way where she could just tell he didn't really approve, ecspecially when afterwards his eyes would stray to whatever overly put together and heavily made up rally girl happened to be near by. Any tardyness on her part was met with a clenched jaw instead of an easy laugh, and her constant flipping between decisions did nothing but annoy him instead of giving him another oppurtunity to play and joke with her.

She had tried long and hard to get her boyfriend back, but she was beginning to think the quarterback she was dating now was not the same smalltown boy she had been dating before.

_But according to him, I'm_

_beautiful__, incredible, he can't get me out of his head  
According to him__  
I'm funny, irresistible, everything he ever wanted  
Everything is opposite, I don't feel like stopping it,  
so __baby__ tell me what I got to lose  
He's into me for everything I'm not,  
according to you._

She wasn't really sure when she had started thinking of Tim Riggins as a friend. Somewhere between when he rescued her at that party and she had gone to apologize any trace of her previous opinion of him, of the opinion the rest of the town had of him, was completely erased. Not to say he didn't drink or sleep with more than his fair share of girls or punch first and think later, but he was better than all of that. He still protected her from the tornado and rocked her baby sister to sleep and stood up for her when she was drunk and defenseless. He bought her home and tried to sneak her in and, when she got caught, took the blame for her own stupid decisions. Tim Riggins, despite popular opinion, was a decent guy.

Didn't know how she would classify her relationship with him, but that didn't matter much anyway. She had used him as an escape route from a party twice when she had ended up crying in the bathroom because of whatever fight she'd had with Matt that night, and Tim had driven her home holding her hand and comforting her through the silence. He began calling her name in the hallway and waving as he walked by, and then coming up to talk to her at lunch a few times – which caused Lois to nearly have a heart attack everytime – and then, occasionally, showing up to hang out with her.

The pretense was that she was tutoring him, which technically she was. She would help him with his english and history homework while he made her laugh and while his grades would improve, so would her attitude. Whenever Matt made her upset instead of running to her mom or Tyra or Lois she usually turned to Tim. She still wasn't sure why exactly she did, but she always did and it always worked for her. She would cry to him and he would comfort her, and she was grateful for the way he could help her in private and then at school appear as if the were merely friends because they had been forced under the same roof once upon a time. And even more greatful for how at practice he could act as if nothing had changed between himself and QB 1's girlfriend.

But he still reassured her that she was beautiful when she cried to him after some rally girl had been laying all over Matt and her boyfriend had done nothing to stop it. He seemed just as happy to be with her as she was to be with him and had even told her, albeit jokingly, that talking to her was the highlight of his day. Every flaw she thought she had thanks to Matt, he reassured her it didn't exist. She began to think of him as an older brother with the number of times he had come along to rescue her or threatened to kill the guy that had caused her tears.

Somewhere along the line though, that feeling changed.

_  
According to you  
I'm boring, I'm moody, and you can't take me any place  
According to you  
I suck at telling jokes cause I always __give it away__  
I'm the girl with the worst attention span,  
you're the boy who puts up with that  
According to you … According to you._

Maybe it was after that big fight she'd had outside her house with Matt. They'd gone to Applebee's with a lot of the team and the cheerleaders, none of which Julie was friends with. Outside of maybe Landry, rarely anyway they did manage to be friends. The rest of them however Julie hardly knew. She'd tried to fit in with the group but after her first few failed attempts at joining in the conversation she'd all but given up, choosing instead to play with her silverware for the rest of the night and twirl the straw in her glass.

She'd drifted off into her own world, thinking of her assignments, Gracie, her homework and, as bad as it may have been, a certain Riggin's boy. She'd completely missed Smash calling her name, trying to ask her a question about what Coach had planned for the game the next day. It'd taken Smash three calls of her name and Matt nudging her shoulder – harder then she really felt was necessary – to get her attention. When they had she'd smiled awkwardly and attempted to crack a joke which had been met with stony silence.

On the way home a few hours later he'd complained about how quiet she'd been all night, staring at her plate all moody and how she'd ruined his fun night with the guys. After asking if she had been staring at the chicken on her plate because she expected it to get up and walk away, and her response that if it had at least something remotely interesting would have happened, things had really blown up in their faces.

He'd complained that everywhere they went lately she was in a bad mood and ruining his fun, that she didn't even try to fit in with his friends and then that she wasn't the fun Jules he'd been dating the first time. She had snapped back a million things she didn't even really remember, they seemed so unimportant to her now. But when she'd turned away from him to stare through her front window he'd come back again with how she always drifted off and could never pay attention to anything and he was getting really sick of having to put up with her weird attitude. It was about then that she'd slapped him and stormed into her house in tears.

_But according to him_  
_I'm beautiful, incredible, he can't get me out of his head_  
_According to him I'm funny, irresistible,_  
_everything he ever wanted_  
_Everything is opposite, I don't feel like stopping it,_  
_so baby tell me what I got to lose_  
_He's into me for everything I'm not,_  
_according to you_

She wasn't surprised when she ended up curled up in her bed cradling her phone, a familiar voice telling her that Matt wasn't good enough for her and she shouldn't have to put up with his shit. Despite herself she had smiled at the comforting words and hugged a stuffed cow Matt had gotten for her at some point tighter to her chest. He'd laughed at her dumb jokes, unlike her boyfriend, and when she told him she was sorry for having ruined his night and making him listen to her sad stories and tears he'd told her not to worry about it, that they were friends and that's what friends do. That he was there for her anytime she needed, day or night. Of course, she had realised that long ago.

The irony wasn't lost on her that Tim Riggins, who never stuck around long to enough to even manage a 'goodbye' for the girl who'd just screamed his name, was telling her all of this and making her feel so loved and special. Or how this was the exact opposite of how her boyfriend had been making her feel lately. That whenever Matt made her cry she went running to him, the most least likely person to ever wipe away a girls tears.

When her phone beeped with an incoming call she'd jumped. But, after seeing who was calling, she whispered that she had to go to Tim. He'd whispered goodnight and goodluck and reminded her that, even if seven was a jackass and made her cry, she always had someone there to wipe away her tears.

Funnily enough, she did end up needing someone to wipe those tears away. Because, even though he'd started off apologizing and asking her to forgive him, when she'd made the mistake of telling him that she'd gotten help from a friend and used the pronnoun 'he' instead of 'she', Matt hadn't missed it. She wasn't sure how exactly he had jumped to Riggins (he hadn't been Matt's first guess but he hadn't been far behind it either), but the silence that met his demand of whether or not she had been talking to Tim Riggins answered his question clearly enough.

And even if the two boys were team mates and (sometimes) even friends, that didn't mean Matt was unaware of the older boys reputation with girls or trusted Tim anymore than anyone else in Dillion did. Which was no surprise really. Most of the conversation had managed to escape her memory, the harsh words they'd whispered to each other dissapearing into the night, but she remembered the way they'd made each other feel. She could remember staring blankly at the wall and squeezing the cow as he'd told her that getting mixed up with Tim Riggins would be the biggest mistake of her life and accused her of having gone behind his back with the star fullback. Holding back her tears, Julie had managed to choke out a goodnight before hanging up on him.

_  
I need to feel appreciated,  
like I'm not hated. Oh …nooo...  
Why can't you see me through his eyes?  
It's too bad you're making me decide_

All that fighting was what had led her here. Leaning against the brick wall outside the field house, Julie scuffed the toe of her sneaker against the concrete and waited. The Panthers had won the game, big surprise there, and most of the players were still celebrating in the locker room. A few of the second and third string guys, the ones that never really spent much time with their teammates outside of practices, had made their way out to their cars and driven off already. But she stood there and waited, thinking about everything that had happened last night. How she had slapped Matt and gone crying to Tim and then fought with Matt yet again after that.

And about how this morning Matt had tried to pretend nothing had ever happened. He'd comie up and wrapped his arm around her shoulder before kissing her cheek and walking her to her first class, the same way he did every morning they were together. The only clue that something was wrong was how he'd tensed when he'd seen Riggins down the hall. Tightening his grip on Julie, he had turned and steered her down a small side hallway to avoid the fullback, even though this meant both he and Julie had barely set foot in class before the bell rang. That had continued throughout the day, Matt tensing at sight or sound of number thirty-three and his hold on Julie tightening everytime it happened.

She couldn't forget how she'd felt after school either, when Matt had caught her gaze drifting over the parking lot to where Tim was climbing up into his truck. Her boyfriends fingers had dug into her waist as he spun her around and marched her off towards his own car. Muttering the entire time about Tim and how he could even think about Julie like that, how she wasn't Tim's type. When they'd reached her house and she'd opened the door, he'd asked for the second time if anything was going on between her and Tim Riggins. She'd mumbled 'no' and resisted the urge to scream at him for even assuming that about her. He'd reminded her once again of his feelings on the subject and informed her that he wasn't comfotarble with her 'friendship' with his teammate.

Jumping, Julie was drawn out of the memories by the sudden sound of the metal door of the locker room being swung open and banging against the brick, the way many of the players exited the room. Glancing over, she saw Smash, Landry, Tim, and Matt all walk out into the night followed by other players she'd never bothered to get close to and the last of the coachs.

She'd thought she'd known what she wanted when she started chasing after Matt again. What she had been doing when they'd had sex and how everything would be when they had gotten back together. But she'd been wrong, oh so wrong.

Pulling herself out of the thoughts that she had been lost in for the better part of the day, she realized that they were all watching her. Matt was standing over by his car with Smash and Landry, waiting for her to walk over like the obedient football player's girlfriend they all expected her to be. Her dad had already climbed into his SUV and started the engine, but was sitting behind the wheel and watching her just as closely as his players.

Tim was the only one not staring at her, his back to her as he ambled slowly across the parking lot towards his old truck. Throwing his bag into the back, he glanced breifly at Julie before opening his door and sliding up into the seat, the engine roaring to life and seeming to jumpstart her into action.

A small smile dancing across her lips, Julie shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and set off across the pavement.

_But according to me_  
_you're stupid, you're useless,_  
_you can't do anything right…_

The expression on Matt's face when she opened the passenger side door of Tim's truck was priceless, his mouth hanging open and his eyes so wide she couldn't believe they hadn't popped out of the sockets yet. She couldn't help giggling at his face, at how amazed he was at the sight of her sitting there, buckling her seat belt as Tim shifted into drive.

She had had enough of being looked down at, of not being good enough for QB1. Not to say that she hadn't loved Matt, or that she didn't still and that a small part of her was in pain over having lost that. But she thought that it was more the reluctance to admit that her first real relationship, her first love, was over and done with. And the fear of what was going to come. Because looking in the rearview mirror at the angry expression on what was now her ex boyfriends face, she knew that she had made the right decision.

Tim, for his part, didn't say much, instead allowing one hand to slide across the seat, dissapearing beneath hers and and tangling their fingers together as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the main road.

_  
But according to him  
I'm beautiful, incredible, h__e can't get me out of his head  
According to him_

_I'm funny, irresistible, everything he ever wanted  
Everything is opposite,  
I don't feel like stopping it,  
baby tell me what I got to lose  
He's into me for everything I'm not,  
According to you  
According to you_

Julie was happy. For the first time in a while she felt really and truly happy. With the windows rolled down and her blonde hair whipping around her in the wind, she threw her head back and laughed. Beside her, Tim Riggins, Dillon's resident bad boy, smiled at the beautiful girl beside him and squeezed her fingers in his own.

_According to you_  
_I'm stupid, I'm useless,_  
_I can't do anything right…_

* * *

**Okay I apologize for any spelling/grammar mistakes, I'm still a bit rusty. And for any issues with alignment and spacing, the document uploader is giving me a hard time today…but that said, I would love to know what you think of my story. Comments and constructive criticism are welcome. It's easy really, just click the 'review' button ;) **


End file.
